Welcome to our city; MONTES DE LA CASTELLANA is located in the La Castellana neighborhood of this capital. Called by Poet President Guillermo León Valencia “The City Miracle”, when visiting the village that was on the road between his native Popayán and Bogota; Found it with factories, workshops, railroad, own power plant, threshing machines, coffee trade, cocoa, etc. Today, it can be traversed, observe and find some vestiges of that glorious and enterprising past that although subject to the swings of the changes still perceived in its dynamism.

Armenia was founded on October 14, 1889 by a group of settlers; With Jesús María Ocampo dubbed “Tiger Man” as his group leader. The founders of the city came as the great majority of the settlers of La Hoya del Quindío, the migrants who lived in the towns and cities of the Departments of Caldas and the South East and East of Antioquia (Pereira, Manizales, Salamina, Pacora , Fredonia, Jericó, Jardín among others), as well as of the Former sovereign state of Cauca and by the displaced of the political wars of the State of Cundinamarca. They settled in a “Fonda Caminera” (Road Inn) around the path of travelers who were part of the farm called “La Armenia”

And why My “Cuyabra” of the Soul …? Why the Armenians and in recent years to the Quindians call us CUYABROS ?. I am going to reproduce a fragment taken from the Blog of the Academy of Quindío History that says: in the region there was a plant called Coyabra or Cuyabra, a creeping shrub, whose fruit is a gourd, a Lagenaria Siceraria, of the cucurbit family. It was never used or used as food, but as a container when the fruit is dry. At present it is very difficult to find the plant in the region of Quindío itself. It is also known as tarralí. In antiquity it existed in abundant form as a weed, especially in the portion of land that was known as Armenia in the process of Colonization of Quindío.

The nickname comes from a discussion, ‘fight’ between the Calarqueños (Calarcá is the second city of the Department) and the armenitas that only in the last forty years has subsided. According to the historian Jhon Jaramillo Ramírez, of the Academy of History of Quindío, this motto is work of the calarqueños. They called those who lived in the newly founded town of Armenia, where the cuyabra was abundant, as a way of responding (revenge) to the motto that the Armenians had given to the Calarqueños: Charrascaleños, since they said that the lands of Calarcá They were but charrascales.

The truth is that between the two peoples there is a story of strong discussions. The foundation of Armenia originates precisely because the settlers of the left bank of the river did not want to be in the strip of land that requested Calarcá covered in the Wasteland laws, and that included them to them. So, to get away from that pretension, they plan to create a new town, which is finally called Armenia. In addition, settlers settled on this portion of the left bank, which was already known as Armenia, wanted to bypass the pretensions of the colonizing company Burila, who claimed the government, with deeds in hand, these lands as their own. (http://academiadehistoriadelquindio.blogspot.com.co/2015/01/armenia-una-granja-de-cuyabras.html)